How did Amiga influence you?

[tone007]

Yes but try encoding video on the same i7 machine running XP Sp3. And I bet (once in the app) you won't notice a difference..

Good point, futher proves the newer OS isn't "holding back" your hardware.  We wouldn't expect it to run faster on Windows 7, would we?

edit: enough off-topic from me, couldn't leave that issue alone though..

[gertsy]

Can't hold up progress for a few legacy apps, unfortunately.

Here's the fix, though, XP mode.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Hint: virtualization is awesome, and will help you get every last bit of performance out of your machines.

If you mean use up every last bit of resource, I agree.   (o:

Yes progress is to continually buy new kit and bury the old stuff.  I think our great grand kids will have some wonderful comments in regard to "progress"

Another thing the Amiga taught me is that revolutionary technology lasts 7 years.  not 3.

[Amiga_Nut]

Two things...

1. Financially affected me a lot! lol I was the poorest 15 year old in town after handing over the cash for my A1000, just 12 months after my Neochrome station (520STM) purchase oops.

2. I was suddenly interested in what was under the casing making the magic happen. I never cared about how VIC-II or SID worked on my C64, never really cared what it was inside my Coleco that made games look less shit than my VCS

After reading a leaked report in late 1984 on some text based Prestel type service (Teletext page) provided by some computer show (similar to Computer Chronicles in the USA) about the specifications of the new Amiga launching in 1985 really peaked my interest and I made sure I was reading things like Byte and PCW magazine not comics like ZZAP. Watching Robo-city and listening to Fairlight synthesizer samples being played back on this little A1000 sealed my fate as a techie forever

The difference is I never jumped to Macs (why would I..if you stopped the sale of chicken pies I wouldn't start eating steak and kidney ones just for the sake of eating pies I don't like lol) and well PC is just a tool like a ratchet set or a torque wrench, I don't caress my tools after servicing my car...ditto after building a site I don't treat my PC to a new toy or clean it OCD style as if it was a Ferrari on my driveway.

I just moved my focus where the real cutting edge stuff is...games consoles and cars that produce silky smooth 110bhp/Litre without silly superchargers or rubbish turbos farting out their asses.

[gertsy]

......  We wouldn't expect it to run faster on Windows 7, would we?
....
..

I expect it.  But never see it.  
I remember when WB 1.3 came out it was supposed to be faster than WB 1.2.  Didn't see it. When 2.05 came out it slowed things down a lot.  So the Amiga also influenced me in that usually new OSes are slower OSes on the same hardware.  Win 7 is probably a good effort in that regard.

[Mulle]

When Amiga came into my life in the late 80th did it revolution my world with awesome graphic and sound. In early 90th when the use of PC became more common and the other kids in school bragged about how awesome their new pc system was and all cool games they had. It was ironic becouse all the games they bragged about was old news for any amiga gamer and still the graphic was way better on my 'old' and not so cool amiga 500. A few years after commondore's bankruptcy came the end of my usage of the amiga 500 that had last for years.
 
PC came with its blue screens, system errors and long loading times together with installations and troubble using a soundcard. Times go by and nowdays using the only workable windows os (xp) while studying as an game artisian. Im not missing or want any old pc back in my life but I brough myself an almost 'new' classic A600, so amiga have affect me for better or worse.

[runequester]

amiga set the expectation that the OS should be fairly easy to mess with, the computer should work with a minimum of fuss and an appreciation for doing more with less hardware

It also got me interested in computers and software in general, so there's that

Also, 2 player games. Stick in a second joystick and have at it.
Nowadays, even console games tend to be single player or online play only

[Daedalus]

The Amiga did spoil me! At the time I got my A1200 I was used to 486s and Windows 3.1. Christ the difference! Though I do remember writing some simple benchmarking tools which showed the PC to be much faster at number crunching and drawing text (naturally enough - it was in DOS mode), but between the Amiga OS and Blitz Basic I found it an awful experience to use any PC. Even nowadays, programming in Visual Studio or simply trying to move some files around, there are things that just don't work, and I have to stop and figure out why because the same techniques used to work on the Amiga.

It also taught me a lot about computer architecture, long before I re-learned the same things in university. The fact that it was so open, so easy to tinker with in both hardware and software, made it a joy to use. Sure, you spend a lot of time rebooting, but that tended to happen a lot back in the Windows 95 days during development too...

[SamuraiCrow]

When I finally admitted that my C128 was pretty well obsolete, I needed a new machine to get things done.  By this time I had a list of features that I wanted added to GEOS for the 128 that would have revitalized that machine.  When I looked for a new machine the Amiga had everything on that list and then some.

It had sprites in hardware, it had a list of raster interrupts with a means of maintaining them in the operating system (aka Copper lists), it had everything except support for character-mapped graphics in the hardware (which would have only made sense on a C128 anyway) but didn't need it because of the ScrollingTrick in software.

Most PC hardware now has fragment shaders but has to use them really well to imitate the features of the Amiga.  Unfortunately when Doom and Wolfenstein3D came out, the Amiga dream was left out in the cold and my time switched to campaigning for a new Amiga chipset when Commodore went under and Amiga was bought out time and time again.

Next stop, NatAmi!  I have high (though tempered) hopes for the NatAmi coming out with a new Amiga chipset in an FPGA and CPLD.  It does what the Classic Amigas did and does that in the same ways that the Amiga did them.  Unlike the MiniMig, this actually uses some of the techniques that have been available on the PC since the days of Doom and offers the best of both worlds.

[Pyromania]

Got me into software development for the Amiga Video Toaster.

[sledge]

The Commodore 64 was the first home computer that I had. I got it back in 1983 when I was a kid. The Amiga made an entrance in 1987 when the Amiga 500 was released. The C64 formed me to be a computer nerd, interested in electronic music and stuff. The Amiga was on par with the rest of the world of 1987 with samples and stuff. My electronic music interest grew even more, and so did the computer nerd in me.

I have had a diffucult time to just let the Amiga and C64 go and go on with new things in life. Sure, I work in the IT-business and enjoy new technology, but I tend to keep myself hanging around the C64 and Amiga in my spare time... alot!

I would say that the Amiga and C64 (since they somehow are connected to each other for guys like me) have completely formed my interest in life, my music interest and a attitude around it. Who can *really, really* enjoy Windows, Mac or Linux when you have been using Amiga from the start???

Not me...

/Amiga nerd... and proud...

[Amiga_Nut]

Due to the crazy pricing in the UK of £220 for C64.....£300 for 1541....most of us here were stuck with a C64 and those wonderful loading screens and loading tunes to while away 5-15 minutes of your life lol. I never got to use my C64 creatively except for a bit of programming. There's a limit to what you can do creatively on a machine with a CLI and a tape deck

What Amiga taught me was how much creative fun you could have with a computer, I had a sampler, a nice setup for using Digiview, Dpaint/Dvideo/Dphotolab/Digipaint/Photon paint. I spent more on this stuff than games.

And that was the biggest difference, I could spend days doodling on Dpaint, I don't think I would have bothered to put such effort into a machine with borders/16 colour palette/restrictions on where each colour can go per char block.

Freedom, creative freedom, that's what Amiga gave me and I guess that influenced me because Photoshop annoys me with it's 4ghz octa-core CPU requirements to get a smooth fluid brush stroke under Win7 LOL.

[paolone]

Okay then, how did Amiga influence you? Did it inspire, change your life philosophy, get you interested in something? Did it have negative effects?

Among the hundreds and hundreds of servers stored in the datacenters I work inside, there are some with system virtual volume (the "drive" seen by the operating system, but actually two HDDs in RAID-1) called "sys" and data virtual volume called "Work". I wonder who has set up them... :rolleyes:

[Colani1200]

The Amiga really inspired me. I made my first music on the Amiga (hell, I even produced my first record on the Amiga). I did so much with it... Painted pictures in Dpaint, rendered 3d images, I made my homework with it. I even printed my exculpations (not sure if this is the correct word) with it when I didn't go to school. I created an IFF image of my father's signature for that. :lol: I had him sign on mm paper and transferred it pixel by pixel because I didn't have a scanner. It was ok with him, he trusted me... In short: The Amiga was the ultimate tool for me. And it helped me to become the creative person I am now.

EDIT: And I think it made me end up in the IT business, that's probably the negative effect it had.

[carvedeye]

Well i have to say that back in the hayday of the amiga it was leaps and bounds ahead of the pc in terms of quick booting and true multitasking and a very friendly OS. I loved my amiga 1200 and had many great years with it (that was back in the early 90's) but for the love of god i cant think of what happened to it but i had a lot of fond memory's. then back in 2000'ish my friend was selling his 1200 for £60 so bought that of him it is now fully expanded inside a EZ Z4 tower with a meditaor expansion board. voodoo 3 gfx, sb128 sound card and realtek network card running AmigaOS 3.9 which sits in my Compter room.

[persia]

It got me into IT and it taught me patience in the numerous times it guru'd.  Since nothing ever worked "out of the box" with it I learned to diagnose problems and understand how things worked.  It taught me to frequently save my work.  It taught me that anything was possible, on a wing and a prayer, but still possible...

[cecilia]

My Amiga 2000 was my very first computer. It taught me everything about how to use a computer. Because it was logical I was able to see the relationship between icons and CLI commands. I was able to play around and figure things out.....I know it would never have been so easy or fun on another OS.

My Amiga let me see the possibilities of a computer as an artists tool. It was THE most important purchase of my career. I learned how to multitask - I still don't think you can do that on a windows machine. it DOES feel different.

Amiga let me see how to solve problems - this is a subtle point and I don't think I can fully explain it. I was able to see that computer related problems can be solved in a variety of ways. You just have to keep looking and you will eventually find it.

These and many other lessons were used during my career, even when we had to change to other computers.

"Amiga" is not just a computer, it's a way of thinking and creating. Which is why it will never die.